Cache was placed originally for the Billy the Kid Geofest 8. Please search for this cache with reverence and respect. It is NOT inside the cemetery. Please rehide well!
When I was a youngster my family was looking to relocate from Roswell to Picacho, so that my father, who worked as Peter Hurd’s business manager, could be closer to work. The nearby Casa Linda property was a possibility but no-one in the family wanted to live so close to a cemetery! The property was not purchased and the family continued to live in Roswell.
History:
Picacho was settled around 1867 or 1868 by Hispanic sheep and goat herders from the vicinity of Socorro or Manzano. Robert Casey, one of the first Euroamericans in the Hondo Valley, purchased his ranch near Picacho in 1868 from Leopold Chene, a Frenchman. Casey was a Texas rancher looking to establish a location from which he could provide beef to both Fort Stanton and Fort Sumner. The Casey property was six miles east of Hondo and about two miles west of Picacho. Casey’s ranch included a ranch house, a grist mill, a blacksmith shop, and an irrigation ditch. At that time, there were only four houses between Casey’s ranch and the town of Lincoln, and only one settlement, Missouri Plaza, between the ranch and Fort McKavett, Texas, 400 miles away to the south/southeast. The ranch remained in the Casey family until 1960. The population of Picacho (which may or may not include Tinnie in the census record) was never very large. The count declined from 405 people in 1890 to 287 people in 1950. The census records indicate that there were 86 students in the Picacho School District in 1880 and 103 students in 1920. The early Picacho school no longer exists. The WPA built a second Picacho school in 1940, which is used as a residence today. The Picacho Elementary School closed in 1958, when various elementary schools in the valley were consolidated into a single school in Hondo.
Search revealed a couple of interesting headstones:
Job Ball
BIRTH 4 Mar 1827
DEATH 6 Nov 1897 (aged 70)
BURIAL Picacho Cemetery
F S Kean
BIRTH Apr 1848 in Ireland
DEATH 20 May 1906 (aged 58)
BURIAL Picacho Cemetery
Jose Pedro Analla- founded the town of Analla New Mexico, which later was renamed Tinnie. At the time of his death, Jose was referred to as the "richest man in Lincoln County" by the local newspaper
BIRTH 1832
DEATH 24 Mar 1899 (aged 66–67)
BURIAL Picacho Cemetery